Criminals who fire guns could soon be caught red-handed. A has developed tiny sticky tags that are coated onto a gun cartridge and attach themselves to the hands or gloves of anyone who handles it. The 30-micrometre 鈥渘anotags鈥� consist of pollen coated with titanium oxide, zirconia, silica or other oxides, in proportions that can be varied for each batch of cartridges to create unique identifying signatures.
A system that can automatically recognise the bird species singing in a given neck of the woods has been developed by computer scientists at the in Germany. The software picks out particular bird calls from months of field recordings by looking for their characteristic frequencies or verse structures. It should help researchers understand changes in the populations of endangered species.
